


Oxyhydrogen

by levy120



Category: Tangled: The Series (Cartoon)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Gen, Or Is It?, fire hazard, lab accident
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-05
Updated: 2018-09-05
Packaged: 2019-07-07 09:05:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15905175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/levy120/pseuds/levy120
Summary: “Not again, Varian”or Varian ends up in a dire situation after a fiery experiment gone wrong. [Pre-Series]





	Oxyhydrogen

This was not supposed to happen!

It had come out of nowhere – the combustion – and Varian staggered back for his own safety. For a second it seemed like that might have been all already. A small little misstep, easy enough. He'd just be able to collect himself and go back to his work.  
Surprises were a common feature when working on a trial and error basis after all. The hard part was that one could hardly ever predict them, such as what followed after the sprinkler of his ‘fire-be-gone’ prototype had turned on. The contact of the water droplets caused what had been a small ignition before, to grow into a series of smaller explosions and a big haze of white smoke.

Coughing, Varian backed off and tried to shield his face from the smoke, eyes scanning over his tools. If the water wasn't of any help (well, at least he could account for a success _here_ ), then he'd just have to choke out the fire. No problem. He'd already done this procedure a dozen times, this was nothing that he couldn't handle...  
Except not even a minute after the blanket had been draped over the burning metal, the bright glow of the flame seemed to increase through the fabric and the next thing that Varian was aware of was that very blanket setting on fire with one swift stroke, like someone had previously drenched it in something flammable.

That... well _that_... was one more thing that Varian could add onto the list of things he hadn’t seen coming.  
And worst of all – at this rate, the fire definitely wasn’t going to go out _on its own_ any time soon.

As he was contemplating his next move, a single spark had jumped from the burning blanket into the nearby pot of grease from his previous experiment and set those contents aflame as well. He should have put the lid back on, dang it! WHERE WAS IT???  
Thankfully it didn’t take long for the boy to spot it lying on the desk on the other side of the room. He must have moved it there when he'd been eager to write down the results of the prior test.

Well, color him less enthused now.

Varian hurried over to pick it back up – when suddenly everything was happening way too fast.  
First, the fire had managed to burn a hole through the blanket, re-exposing the metalfire beneath it to the water again, prompting another explosion and subsequently blowing the ‘fire-be-gone’ contraption from its hinges, causing the entire water to spill from the tank in one big surge and the burning grease to bloom into a mushroom cloud that raced along the ceiling and had quickly set the entire room on fire within a matter of _seconds_.

Great.

The view was absolutely mesmerizing, captivating in a horrifying way, the likes of which Varian had only ever seen in his nightmares. It took a plank of burning wood to topple from the ceiling for the young alchemist to realise that he did not have any time to waste-  
Finally pulling himself together and bolting to the shelf to save his research, Varian snatched as many vials as he could in his arms to carry out of the lab before the fire could spread far enough to engulf the shelf. As far as the fire itself was concerned, Varian was at a loss, but he couldn’t waste time to think about that now. Maybe, he hoped desperately, _maybe_ he’d come up with a solution on the way.

By the time Varian returned for the second run, the fire had indeed spread further than the boy would have liked. The first flames were already licking at the shelf containing his chemicals – and much to Varian’s frustration he hadn’t come up with a proper idea yet. What wasn’t already cut off from the fire was now flooded with smoke and Varian noted a particular stench that he was certain did _not_ result from the flames. Breathing was likely going to be a problem soon…

He’d just have to hurry then.

Clenching his jaw at the state of his lab, Varian pulled his goggles over his eyes and protectively shielded the rest of his face with the sleeve of his left arm. His welding-mask was still lying abandoned somewhere on the working-platform, too close to the fire source to safely grab, so Varian instead immediately ventured for the shelf again, aiming to safe another row of possible volatiles that he couldn’t allow to catch on fire.

Getting the chemicals was easy. Returning them – not so much. The density the smoke had reached during his absence was making the ground area nearly impossible to see save for a couple of little patches where smaller fires had broken out. By now Varian all but relied on muscle memory to navigate his way towards the door. That in itself shouldn’t have been a problem, hadn’t it been for the fact that one of the flasks in his arms was threatening to slip. While trying to balance his armful of chemicals in a way that would prevent any from falling, Varian sidestepped rather haphazardly. Somehow he’d still managed to stabilize the pile in his arms, but that relief had died quickly, as soon as the sound of a snapping wire caught his ears.

If there was ever a time for expletives, Varian was sure it was now.

Okay. _Okay_ . O- _kay_. Usually, this would have been the point for Varian to take a _deep_ breath and focus. Except now, the hazardous air around him was making that plan a very bad one. He’d just… have to pull himself together. Putting down the vials without breaking them would be the first step, and then he’d be able to slip out of his boots and everything would be fine. The raccoon trap only encased his footwear after all – See? No problem. He could handle this. Totally. This was _fine_.

Except things never played out that easily and after having fumbled to put down about half of the vials in his arms, another deafening boom rang from the seat of fire causing something heavy and fuzzy to knock into Varian’s back from the ceiling, almost toppling him over.  
It wasn’t heavy or hard enough to seriously hurt, but it had certainly come as a surprise and once Varian recovered from that little moment of shock he found the _raccoon_ of all things cowering nearby and glancing around like it had no idea what was going on.

“You?!” Wait! Had this thing been in the rafters ALL THIS TIME?!

No, wait! This could actually be GOOD! “Hey…” Varian tried again, his voice now more lowered to calm the little critter down.  
“How are you doing? Did you get hurt?” It didn’t _look_ hurt surprisingly, but that didn’t matter right now. First and foremost, Varian wanted to make it clear that he was not a threat to the already frazzled animal.  
Once it seemed to have calmed down somewhat and the raccoon’s gaze had leveled with Varian’s with what appeared to be a look of recognition, the young alchemist felt a small surge of victory.

Okay, good. This could _actually_ work!

Next, Varian tried to direct its attention to the neutralizing solution left on the desk with his written research (and that dreadful, dreadful lid). The fire hadn’t had a chance to reach that space yet, and Varian firmly planned to make that his next priority once he was free to move again. The raccoon meanwhile tilted its head in confusion, backing off slightly as it glanced at the odd flask on the table.

"Yes, yes that one," Varian urged it to comply, only to break into a coughing fit shortly after. Awe curses, this was a bad sign. The raccoon's ears drooped in pity and it tried to approach the kid, but before Varian could stop it from also padding into the residue of the trap an ominous crackling sounded from above-

  
Quirin, out working the field, had been blissfully unaware until a screeching raccoon flew from their house in a wild frenzy and he raised a curiously concerned brow at it. The little critter, he knew, had been showing up every now and again. Varian had been more than excited to tell him about the new trap he'd developed just recently, but that design hadn't been anything too scary and certainly would have rather _kept_ the animal in place, than causing it to run like it was being chased by the devil himself.

So what had happened?

The smoke emitting from the basement hadn’t been all too alarming before – it wasn’t an unfamiliar sight to say the least. But now, coupled with the smell of fire that accompanied it, unlike the usual stench of sulfur and other such atrocities… it was incentive enough for Quirin to toss his scythe and rush towards the old building.

"Varian!" He called desperately wishing to catch sight of his son being on his way out already, but sadly the desperate father was granted no such luck.  
"VARIAN!" he tried again, growing more and more agitated by the moment. Unfortunately, instead of receiving the answer he longed for, the building shook from its foundation and suppressing a curse Quirin bound straight for the lab.

The door to Varian’s lab was gaping wide open and as expected, this was where the smoke was billowing out of. It had begun to spread in the corridor leading the man towards its source and Quirin covered his face as he examined the flickering shadows from within the room. Squinting his eyes the usually stoic man attempted to catch a glimpse within the thick smoke, looking for any sign of his son with fierce attention. The smoke and fallen rubble made it impossible to see anything and Quirin already feared the worst… when the sound of faint coughing sent his heart racing.

Throwing himself into the fire to seek out the source of that sound, Quirin eventually, FINALLY, found his son collapsed under a piece of rubble. With newfound motivation the worried father pulled the offending debris away from the boy and tossed it aside to reveal the previously buried kid underneath.

By the look of it the ceiling had come down on Varian as he’d been trying to escape the very raccoon trap his son had presented to him so proudly just a couple of days ago. The weight of the impact must have pushed Varian further into the icky goo, keeping him helplessly pinned to the ground.  

The young alchemist glanced up at his father with an exhausted look of trepidation. He managed a feeble “Dad-” before falling into another coughing fit. Spurred on by this, Quirin wasted no time to try and pull his son free from the trap by force, though he let go of him the very instant the kid cried out in pain. The evidence of a dark discoloration beginning to bloom on Varian’s shoulder erased any semblance of thought from Quirin’s mind-

“The neutralizer…” It was the voice of his son that pulled him back, and the man couldn’t help but notice how raspy it had already become from its prolonged exposure to the smoke. Varian’s trapped arm prevented him from easily pointing at anything, but Quirin followed his son’s gaze instead towards a desk. Except, the desk itself had also been pelted by smaller pieces of rubble (not that Varian could see from his position). If the vial had truly been on there before, it was either broken now or had fallen to the ground where a few other flasks lay strewn about. A few of them, Quirin could tell, were broken and pooling around the boy, a couple lay within reach, while two others seemed to have been deliberately shoved into the farthest corner of the room. The contents of which, Quirin supposed, Varian probably wouldn’t want to be close by to in the effect of them catching fire.

Figuring that he didn’t have the time and not wanting to pull the risk of foolishly trying the vials for their appropriate content (Truthfully, if he knew anything about Varian’s experiments, it was that all of them could backfire, under the wrong – and oftentimes even the right circumstances), the man let his gaze roam across the room instead, swiftly spotting what appeared to be the core of the fire. The flames had spread to a troubling degree already, but there was a distinct, blinding white flare burning through the table to his left. Surely he could be of more help to his son, if he could kill the fire first and keep it from spreading even further!

Varian watched on anxiously as his father was quietly piecing together a plan and panicked when the man’s wandering eyes came to rest on a wooden vat of water in the corner of the room.  
"No, Dad, no, whatever you do, don't-"

But by this point, Quirin had already dragged the bucket over to the heart of the fire and attempted to douse it with one hefty swing-

As Varian had feared, the flames had only intensified upon the contact, the metal-fire bursting with an exploding flash and the grease stains on the desk and wall reignating in a fiery blaze.  
The shower of silver stars raining down on them that followed after, shimmering even through the heavy smoke, would have been a magnificent sight at any other time, but right now?

Now, It was downright terrifying.

"DAD!!!" Varian bellowed from his trapped spot on the ground, trying to struggle free again and failing. His eyes locked onto the bright glow where the explosion happened, desperate for a sign of his father. Varian knew he shouldn’t be looking directly into the light, it was so bright it hurt, but he couldn’t just NOT do that! Not when his father had gotten caught up in a violent explosion!

Yes, the lab was still burning, yes the flames had escalated again and had grown a whole new level of aggressive after Quirin’s attempt to fix things and yet- all of that felt small in comparison to the mere thought of losing his father. He would always be able to recreate his research, buy new chemicals and relocate his lab, but…

He wouldn’t be able to do that when neither of them lived through this.

After what felt like an eternity, to the helpless teen, Varian felt himself flooding with the biggest relief he felt in… well, ever really, when he caught sight of his father’s silhouette emerging from the brightness. Hunched over and hurt, coughing from the force of the blast, definitely not in the best shape he’d ever been, but very much alive and breathing!

"Varian," the man admonished, and the teen in question had never felt happier at being called out. His father stumbled towards the young alchemist with an arm shielding his face as he dropped down next to his son, "What have you been toying with this time?"

Not waiting for his son’s response, Quirin tried to pull him from the gooey trap again. He could no longer be as considerate of Varian’s possible injury than he had been earlier. What little time they had had before had been greatly diminished now and getting his son _out,_ out of this trap, out of this fire, the danger, out of this lab, into the open to safe and breathable air, had quickly become Quirin’s top-priority. He didn’t care if it meant that he would have to pass up on Varian’s expertise on what exactly he’d been working on, so long as he could be sure that his son was safe.

Damage control had quickly become a luxury that Quirin knew he couldn’t afford anymore.

Varian grunted in pain when his sleeve was torn off and bit his lip to keep from yelping when his father violently tore him free from the sticky substance. He felt a new rush of tears beading in his eyes, this time not caused by the dry air or the aggressive smoke.

"Son!" Quirin urged again, and Varian clung onto him with his good arm for purchase and confirmation. So long as he could feel him under his gloves Varian could rest assured that this was real and that he wasn’t undergoing some sort of messed up fever-dream.

"It's a metal," he explained, "You're not supposed to quench it with water, but trying to choke it didn't work either," he explained frantically. Breathing felt very hard suddenly, but the pain from all the jostling was keeping him awake. The reaction to the water had been expected, given the nature of the experiment, but setting the blanket on fire? Varian couldn’t claim that he was entirely sure why it had done that; yet he felt like he should have KNOWN-

"I ground it up so I would be able to dose it better. I was just going to see- do you remember during the last storm when it rained so badly all of our lanterns went out? I was just looking into methods to keep them burning. I'd never thought-"

Wait, no, he'd been aware of the risk. It had been calculated. He'd just never considered it _properly_ he supposed.

"It reacted more violently than I predicted, then the rest of the powder combusted on its own and I couldn't quench it and it sparked into the grease and-" Varian's rambles became more vindictive and frantic by the second, like he truly hadn't accounted for something like this to happen and Quirin considered this turn of events with a sense of worry. If Varian of all people admitted to not knowing what was going on, then how was _Quirin_ supposed to fix it?!

"I'm sorry."  
That had snapped the man out of his thoughts and he glanced down at his son to find him looking unusually rueful.

"I didn't want this. I'm sorry. You know that, right?"

Quirin gave his son a considering glance. He looked awful, even beyond his current physical state. Face and skin marred and covered by the sooth, the occasional scrapes of the volatile concoctions and of course the darkening spot that had begun to stain the cloth of his left shoulder. The still fresh tear stains on Varian's cheek weren't really helping.

With a sigh Quirin let his son down and leveled with the boy.

"You're alright. That's most important right now."

It must not have been what the teen had wanted to hear because Quirin caught his jaw clenching shortly after. Before he could question Varian on that however a villager had approached the two from behind. The accumulating smoke had apparently drawn some attention by this point and a handful of villagers had come forth to extend their help.

"Yes," Quirin explained, trying to keep his voice even. As the local chief he’d learned long ago not to feed into a building panic, but to instead nip it in the bud before it could grow. "We have a fire down in the basement. Your help is greatly appreciated."

The villager, one of their neighbors, Varian recognised, nodded and was about to leave to inform and collect some of the other residents and resources when-

"Dirt!"

That had been Varian. Their neighbor turned curiously and the young alchemist, approaching a couple of steps before thinking better of it, moved on to elaborate, "You can't quench it with water. We'll need sand. Lots of it,” he explained before nodding his head with a humble “Thank you." and backed off.

  
Not long after most of the village had gathered on their property and had formed a bucket brigade to safely and quickly supply the volunteers in the basement with fresh, loose ground from the nearby fields.

By the time Varian was able to return to his lab, the sun had set long ago already. A couple of the villagers were still shuffling about and sorting out what they considered trash.

What had always been Varian’s sanctuary of sorts, had now become unrecognizable to the young teen.

The walls were blackened with soot, pieces of the wooden ceiling leaned in a corner or were tossed onto a heap along with what had become of most of his furniture. Safety hazards still peered from every corner, but the ground felt soft beneath his feet, laden with sand. It was warm, and Varian swore that if it weren't for the smell of charcoal and the sharp stench of possibly toxic chemicals he could close his eyes and find a comforting memory in the sensation…

But alas... It wasn't so.

The destruction was uncanny and Varian struggled to piece together how it had even started. There was the unexpected reaction from the magnesium, the missing lid... The outcome felt far too grave for a slip-up that simple. And yet…

If he could somehow _harness_ the power of that burst in a way they could all _profit_ from… maybe that's how he would be able to show his gratitude for the other villagers. If they hadn't intervened after all, he would no longer have a lab to come back to.

He felt his father’s looming presence behind him before the man even had to say anything and Varian's posture stiffened. Their neighbors were giving them odd looks and one by one began to shuffle out of the scorched room. Varian gulped. It didn't take much to imagine the look on his father's face after that reaction.

"Varian..." he could here him start, but the boy raised his hand to stop him and desperately fixed his gaze on a broken vial sticking out of the sand. "Please, I know what you're going to say..."

Quirin gave pause at this, raising a curious eyebrow, but letting his son speak. Though instead of an elaborate speech, as the man had been expecting, Varian merely sighed, his posture slumping.

"This was dangerous and it won't happen again."

And with that, of course, Varian meant that he'd simply have to relocate further experiments involving grease, fire and any combination of the prior to more open and secluded spaces.

He wasn't sure what he expected after that, but it surely wasn't the firm grasp of his father's hand on his good shoulder, subtly prompting him to turn around. What else could he possibly still want from him?

"This will have to be looked after." The following prod at his bleeding, possibly sprained shoulder was expected, but still caused Varian to flinch and curl in on himself. "I'm glad I found you when I did. I wouldn't know what I'd do if-" _Don't finish that thought..._

"It's... it's okay," Varian offered feebly, sensing his father’s discomfort, "Really."

The silence that followed weighed heavy and awkward. Varian awkwardly began to fidget with his torn sleeve, while Quirin looked on with awkward hesitation. Awkward, awkward, awkward. None of this felt right, but… the man didn’t know how to fix it. Quirin was a chief, the kind of man who put fires out and tilled a field and listened to the concerns of his village… All they ever wanted were permission to extend their home or someone to settle a dispute.

But when it came to his own son… than Quirin more often than not felt lost.  
Such as was the case now.

To say that he didn’t understand the boy would have been a lie. The man knew of Varian’s love for books, both scientific and adventure stories. He knew of his curiosity and love for alchemy and science… but he did not share it, could not _comprehend_ it beyond knowing that it was _dangerous_. The village had already grown weary of his son and after today, Quirin knew this wasn’t going to be changing any time soon.

But he neither had the heart to take from him what he _knew_ was making him happy in his absence, nor the time to supervise the boy all day.  
One day. One day, Quirin knew Varian would end up in trouble again and he wouldn’t be around to fix it, to save him… and the elder man hated that fact.

But he could be there for his son _now_.

Heaving a sigh, Quirin gave Varian’s good shoulder a firm squeeze, prompting the kid (young teen, he had to remind himself) to look up at him.  
“Let’s go fix your shoulder.”

Varian nodded quietly and turned to move back into the house, heading to where both of them knew the bandages would be stored – and for now his father would take comfort in the fact that this day he dreaded so much still had a long time coming.

All that mattered was that it hadn't been today.

**Author's Note:**

> Production Time: 27-08-2018 to 05-09-2018.  
> I'd like to thank all my lovely Betas for their help and patience (kimsnothere, Feral Dog, DJ-Chan), and the Tangled Discord for putting up with my Spam :)  
> You can also find this fic on tumblr: <http://levy120.tumblr.com/post/177772052095/oxyhydrogen>


End file.
